Part 3

In all the galleries of noble women, Greene’s heroines deserve a foremost place, for all the gracious types of womanhood belonged to Greene, before they became Shakespeare’s. “Robert Greene is the first of our play-writers to represent upon the public stage the purity and sweetness of wife and maiden.” Unselfish love and maternity are sketched with feminine delicacy and minuteness of touch in all the tenderness of its purity. His writings have assuaged the sorrow of the self-sacrificing mother, who is always a queen uncrowned, long suffering and faithful. Robert Green “is always on the side of the angels.” When loud mouthed detraction calls him badhearted, we should not forget that this confessedly dissolute man could, and did, keep inviolate the purity of his imagination; few have left a wealthier legacy in feminine models of moral and physical beauty. What is most characteristic in the pages of Greene is the absence of the indecencies which attest the passage of the author of “Lear,” “the damnable scenes which raised the anger of Swinburne and which Coleridge attempted in vain to palliate.”

Little is known of Greene’s life; and into the little we do know, his malignant enemy, Gabriel Harvey, has attempted to inject a deadly virus. The inaccurate figurative expressions in his reputed posthumously printed works (an alleged description of his manner of life) cannot be interpreted literally, “but may be resolved in a large measure into morbid self-upbraidings like the confession made by the revival convert who sees and paints his past in its very darkest colors.” But why should the modern reader linger over the irregularities of dissolute-living authors like Greene and Poe, whose writings are exceptionally clean. Remember Robert Burns’ noble words, “What done we partly may compute but know not what resisted.” The commentators and pharisaic critics, who have written concerning Greene, are mere computists of the poet’s vices; ministers of hate, who burlesque the poet’s soul stiffening with despair, and display their ghoulish instincts “in travestying so pathetic and tragical a deathbed as Greene’s.” Students of Elizabethan literature know that Robert Greene resisted the temptation to write in the best paying vein of the age, that of ministering to the unchaste appetites of readers for ribaldries. “To his undying honor Robert Greene, equally with James Thompson, left scarcely a line, that, dying, he need have wished to blot out.”

There is no record extant of his living likeness. Chettle gives this pleasant description of his personal appearance, “With him was the fifth, a man of indifferent years; of face, amiable; of body, well proportioned; his attire after the habit of scholar-like gentleman, only his hair was somewhat long, whom I supposed to be Robert Greene, Master of Arts.” Nash notices his tawny beard, “a jolly long red peake like the spire of a steeple which he cherished continually without cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and pendant.” Harvey, who had never seen Greene, says that he wore such long hair as was only worn by thieves and cutthroats, and taunts Nash with wearing the same “unseemly superfluity.” The habit of wearing the hair long is not unusual with poets. John Milton “cherished the same superfluity” as does also Joaquin Miller.

Robert Greene expired on the third of September, 1592. When the dead genius was in his grave, Harvey gloated and leered with hellish glee, and wrote of Greene’s “most woeful and rascal estate, how the wretched fellow or, shall I say, the prince of beggars, laid all to gage fore some few shillings and was attended by lice.” This is one of Harvey’s malignant, vitriolic, discharges in his attempt to spatter the memory and deface the monument of the dead. “Achilles tortured the dead body of Hector, and, as Antonious and his wife, Fulva, tormented the lifeless corpse of Cicero, so Gabriel Harvey hath showed the same inhumanities to Greene that lies low in his grave.” The testimony of Gabriel Harvey, whose malignant attacks on the memory of Greene by monstrously exaggerated statement, is vitiated by his own statement that “he was cheated out of an action for libel against Greene by his death.”

Harvey was vulgarly ostentatious, courting notoriety by the gorgeousness of his apparel; currying favor with the great, and aping Venetian gentility after his return from Italy. He was a dabbler in astrology, a prognosticator of earthquakes, and constructor of prophetic almanacs. The failure of his predictions subjected him to much bitter ridicule. His inordinate vanity is best shown by his publication of everything spoken or written in commendation of himself, by his obsequious friends and flatterers, who snickered with the public generally, as he was an object of ridicule, the butt on which to crack their jokes.

In one of those fanciful studies in Elizabethan literature, which we now hold in our hand, we may read, in a work called “A Snip for an Upstart Courtier or A Quaint Dispute Between Velvet-breeches and Cloth-breeches,” that Greene has very vulgarly libeled Harvey’s ancestry; but, when we turn to Greene’s book we learn that the vulgarity consists in calling Gabriel Harvey’s father a ropemaker. Only a snob would regard any honest employment as a degradation, and furthermore, the passage does not point contumeliously and spitefully at Gabriel Harvey’s father, for the reference is very slight. “How is he (Gabriel’s father) abused?” writes Nash, “Instead of his name he is called by the craft he gets his living with.” Still the lines which so mortally offended Gabriel were suppressed by Greene. Notwithstanding this, those biographers and critics whose sole object is to blacken the poet’s memory, conceal from the reader the fact of the detachment of all reference to a rope-maker. Harvey was extremely anxious to push himself among the aristocracy in order to conceal his humble antecedents.

With all his faults, there was nothing of this weakness or snobbishness in Robert Greene, who had himself sprung from the common people, though born to good condition. Robert Burton, a contemporary, writing in “The Spacious Time of the Great Elizabeth” says that idleness was the mark of the nobility, and to earn money in any kind of trade was despicable. Gabriel Harvey flung in Greene’s face the fact that he made a living by his pen. Had young Greene lived a longer life, with all its wealth of bud and bloom, we should now have in fruition a luxuriance of imagination and versatility of diction possessed by few. With longer life he would doubtless “have gained mastery of himself, when he would have gone forward on the path of moral regeneration;” for there was in the poet’s strivings, during the last few years of his life, the promise and prophecy of a glorious future. His soul enlarged, he battled for the commonweal; his heart was with the lowly and his voice was for the right when freedom’s friends were few.

In his play “The Pinner of Wakefield,” first printed in 1599, Robert Greene makes a hero, and a very strenuous one, of a mere pound-keeper who proudly refuses knighthood at the hands of the king. In the sketch given by Professor J. M. Brown we read, “In the first scene of the play when Sir Nicolas Mannering appears in Wakefield with his commission from the rebel, Earl of Kendal, and demands victuals for the rebel army, the stalwart pound-keeper steps forward, makes the knight eat his words and then his seal! ‘What! are you in choler? I will give you pills to cool your stomach. Seest thou these seals? Now by my father’s soul, which was a yeoman’s when he was alive, eat them or eat my dagger’s point, proud squire!’ The Earl of Kendal and other noblemen next appear in disguise and send their horses into the Pinner’s corn to brave him. The pound-keeper approaches and after altercation strikes the Earl. Lord Bondfield says, ‘Villain, what hast thou done? Thou hast struck an Earl.’ Pinner answers, ‘Why, what care I? A poor man that is true is better than an earl if he be false’.” A yeoman boxing or cuffing the ear of an earl! This has all the breezy freshness of American democracy.

“How different from this is Shakespeare’s conception of the place of the working-man in society. In King Lear, a good servant protests against the cruelty of Regan and Cornwall toward Gloucester, and is killed for his courage.” “Give me my sword,” cries Regan, “a peasant stand up thus!” The voice of the yeoman is often heard in Greene’s drama, not as buffoon and lackey, as in Shakespeare, but as freeman whose voice is echoed at Naseby and Marston’s gory fields of glory, where the sturdy yeomanry of England strove to do and to dare for the eternal right—soldiers who never cowered from “sheen of spear,” nor blanched at flashing steel. With Greene rank is never the measure of merit as with Shakespeare. To peer and yeoman alike, he gave equal hospitality; for Robin Greene, as his friends called him, was as friendly to the poor man’s rags as to the purple Robe of King. Greene in his popular sympathies is thoroughly with the working classes, the common people, of whom Lincoln says, “God loves most, otherwise he would not have made so many of them.” His heroes and heroines are taken, many of them, from humble life. In his Pinner of Wakefield there is a very clear discernment of democratic principle in the struggle against prerogative. Half of those plays of Greene’s which we still possess, are devoted to the representation of the life of the common people which gave lineage to Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and John Bunyan. If these are any guide to his character, his is one distinguished both by his amicable and by his amiable qualities.

We have in the “Coney-catching series” Greene’s exposure of the practice of sharpers and knaves, who were fleecing the country people who came to London. The author of these tracts shows great courage in his effort to abate fool-catching. Greene’s life was threatened, and it required the utmost exertion of his friends to prevent his assassination. The Coney-catching knaves, who felt the halter being drawn about their necks, threatened to cut off his hand if he would not desist. Greene, notwithstanding these threats, would not be swerved from his noble aim, but met them like a true Roman, single-handed and alone, while his literary enemies took advantage of this opportunity to blacken his good name. “Greene made these revelations for the good of the commonwealth, and displayed great courage in facing all risks in so doing. No books are more out-and-out sincere.”

Greene’s account of the repentance and reformation of a fallen woman, told in a way that discloses the poet’s kindness of heart and fullness of humanitarian spirit, reveals his better self. “He assured his readers, in the words of the woman herself, that her first false step gradually led her on to complete ruin, so heavy-burdened with grief and shame that death seemed to her a benefaction, and the grave the only place for perfect rest.” Not a few there may have been, who, on reading Greene’s account of the reformation and redemption of this unfortunate woman, were started on the path of regeneration, while the dim-eyed critic can see nothing but the blurred reputation of the poet. But who shall estimate Robert Greene’s influence on individual happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better by a writer who held out a kind and friendly hand, and had a heart as true behind it? His statue would crown Trafalgar’s towering shaft more worthily than the statue of England’s greatest naval hero does; for there is more true honor and merit in the man who wrote purely to bring back from evil courses to a state of moral rectitude, than in a monument for the victory over many enemies.

Greene’s non-dramatic works are the largest contribution left by any Elizabethan writer to the novel literature of the day. “He was at once the most versatile and the most laborious of literary men.” Famous, witty, and brilliant, he was one of the founders of English fiction, and is conceded to be the author of half a dozen plays for the theatre. In them we have the mere “flotsam and jetsam” of his prolific pen. What would we not give for all the plays of Robert Greene from whom his contemporaries and successors purloyned plumes! According to Ben Jonson, it was as safe to pillage from Greene in his day, as it is to persecute his reputation in ours. He was a graduate of both universities, was a man of genius, but did not live to do his talents full justice. A born story teller, like Sir Walter Scott, he could do good work easily and quickly.

We glean the following from the pages of “The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare,” by J. J. Jusserand, “Greene’s prose tale, ‘Pandosto, the Triumph of Time,’ had an extraordinary success, while Shakspere’s drama ‘Winter’s Tale’ founded on Greene’s Pandosto was not printed, either in authentic or pirated shape, before the appearance of the 1623 folio, while Greene’s prose story was published in 1588 and was renamed half a century later, ‘The History of Dorostus and Fawnia.’ So popular was it that it was printed again and again. We know of at least seventeen editions, and in all likelihood there were more throughout the seventeenth century, and even under one shape or another throughout the eighteenth. It was printed as a chap-book during this last period and in this costume began a new life. It was turned into verse in 1672, but the highest and most extraordinary compliment of Greene’s performance was its translation into French, not only once but twice. The first time was at a moment when the English language and literature were practically unknown and as good as non-existent to French readers. In fact every thing from Greene’s pen sold. All of his writings enjoyed great popularity in their day, and, after the lapse of three centuries, have been deemed worthy of publication, insuring the rehabilitation of Greene’s splendid genius.”

We are content to believe that almost all of the so-called posthumous writings of Robert Greene are spurious, and that but few genuine chips were found in the literary work-shop of the poet after his death. We accept the very striking and impressive address to his brother play-wrights, the after-words to a “Groats Worth of Wit.” We also may shyly accept the sweet wife letter as the authentic product of the poet’s mind, heart and hand. Of this letter, there are two versions, neither of which are very trustworthy, as both are from posthumed pamphlets. One, which we believe to be a forgery, is found in “The Repentance.” The other is found in a pamphlet written by his malignant enemy, Harvey, which contains an account of the poet’s last illness and death. Nash writes about Harvey, “From the lousy circumstance of his poverty before his death and sending that miserable writt to his wife, it cannot be but thou lyest, learned Gabriel.” We would not set down as auto-biographical the posthumous pamphlets, even though of unquestioned authenticity, for in the repentance Greene is made to say, “I need not make long discourse of my parents who for their gravitie and honest life are well known and esteemed among their neighbors, namely in the citie of Norwich where I was bred and borne;” and then he is made to contradict all this in “Groats Worth of Wit,” where the father is called Gorinius, a despicable miser. “Greene is not known to have had a brother to be the victim of his cozenage.”

As “there is a soul of truth in things erroneous,” there may be a soul of truth in the following letter contained in “The Repentance”:

“Sweet wife, if ever there was any good will or friendship between thee and me, see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt. I owe him tenne pounds and but for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and forgive my wrongs done unto thee and Almighty God have mercie on my soule. Farewell till we meet in heaven for on earth thou shalt never see me more.

“This 2nd day of Sept., 1592.

“Written by thy dying husband,

“ROBERT GREENE.”

The reader will notice the statement in the posthumed letter that the poet had contracted a debt to the sum of ten pounds, equal to $400 present money, but there is nothing whatever about leaving many papers in sundry bookseller’s hands which Chettle averred in the address “To the Gentlemen Readers Kind Hearts Dreame.” If this were a fact, the bookseller doubtless would have been called upon; “see this bearer (my host) satisfied of his debt,” and sweet wife would not have bourne the burden while booksellers felt themselves blest to pay dear for the very dregs of her husband’s wit.

Those writers who express no doubt of the authenticity of the posthumed pamphlets, leave their readers to set down as auto-biographical whatever portions of those pieces he may think proper. At the same time the trend of impulse is given the reader by the critics that he may not fail to read the story of the poet’s life out of characters devoid of all faith in honesty and in virtue, while the author (Greene) is anxious evidently to point a moral by them and reprove vice. These forged pamphlets and so-called auto-biographical pamphlets make Greene accuse himself of crimes which he surely did not commit, such as the crime of theft and murder. He says, “I exceeded all others in these kinds of sinnes,” and he is represented as the most atrocious villain that ever walked the earth. There is not an atom of evidence adduced to show Francisco in “Never Too Late” was intended by the author for a picture of himself, and we do not believe that Greene wrote the pamphlet in which Roberto, in “Groats Worth of Wit” is one of the despicable characters.

Very little is known with any degree of certainty concerning the personal life of Robert Greene, and very little, if anything, in regard to his family or ancestry, although much prominence is given by imaginary writers to the history of his person in the manuals of our literature. These writers attach an auto-biographical reality to their dreams of fancy. They take advantage of Greene’s unbounded sincerity and his own too candid confession in the address to the play-writers, and of his irrepressible desire to sermonize, whether in plays or pamphlets, with all the fervor of a devout Methodist having a license to exhort. The closest analogy to Greene’s position, in fact, is that of the revival preacher—as Prof. Storojenko puts it—“who, to make the picture of the present as telling as possible, sees and paints his past in its very blackest colors. This self-flagellation is strongly connected with a really attractive feature of Greene’s character; we mean his sincerity, a boundless sincerity which never allowed him to spare himself. Robert Greene was incapable of posing and pretending to be what he was not. This is why we may fearlessly believe him when he speaks of the anguish of his soul and the sincerity of his repentance. A man whose deflection from the path of virtue cost him so much moral suffering cannot, of course, be measured by the same standard as the man who acts basely, remains at peace with himself and defends his faults by all kinds of sophistry. Speaking further of his literary labors, he never dealt in personalities in exposing some of the crying nuisances of London and is perfectly silent as to the moral change in his own character, which was the fruit of his dealing with them. In a word, he conceals all that might, in his opinion, modify the sentence that he pronounces on his own life for the edification of others.”

IV

There is a commendative piece of writing which should be read in connection with Greene’s letter to “divers play-makers.” We refer to the preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams,” written by Henry Chettle, which was registered December 8, 1592. Chettle says, “About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry book-seller’s hands, among others, his ‘Groats Worth of Wit’ in which a letter written to diverse play-makers is offensively by one or two of them taken.” Chettle’s statement about many papers in sundry book-sellers hands may be discredited because of the poet’s urgent necessities, and the strong desire on the part of book-sellers to publish Greene’s writings. Of this we may be sure, that the letter was not placed in book-sellers hands by Greene or for him. He would not have called his friends to repentance in that way, for it would have given publicity to the defects in the lives of his friends as well as his own.

The letter evidences the fact of its having been written as a private letter to three of the poet’s friends (Marlowe, Nash and Peele). If sent, it did not reach them, but was surreptitiously procured, doubtless, by some hack-writer, (inferentially, Henry Chettle, who transcribed it.) Gabriel Harvey may have been accessory to its procurement, as his ghoulish instinct led him to visit the poor shoemaker’s house where Greene died, on the day following the poet’s funeral in search of matter foul and defamatory, and with ink of slander to blacken the poet’s memory. This snobbish ape of gentility, Gabriel Harvey, hated Greene because he called his father by “the craft he gets his living with.” However, when Greene learned that Harvey was ashamed of his father’s humble employment, that of ropemaker, he straightway canceled the offensive allusion, but Harvey still continued to manifest the same hateful malignity and venomous spite. The letter is a fine character study of the three poets addressed. Greene drew out the true feature of every distinguishing mark or trait, both mental and moral, of these, his fellow-craftsmen, who, though he did not name them, are asserted to be Marlowe, Nash and Peele. Greene characterized them individually, and twice he collectively admonished them thus, “Base minded men all three of you, if by my miseries ye be not warned,” and, in the concluding part of the letter, “But now return I again to you three, knowing my miseries is to you no news and let me heartily entreat you to be warned by my harmes.”

All of Shakspere’s biographers and commentators aver that Shakspere was not one of the three persons addressed. How then could Chettle’s words bear witness to his (Shakspere’s) civil demeanor or factitious grace in writing. Mr. Fleay stated many years ago (1886) that there was an entire misconception of Chettle’s language that Shakspere was not one of those who took offense. They are expressly stated to have been two of the three authors addressed by Greene. The recent Shakespearean writers have evidently mistaken Chettle’s placation of Nash or Peele, or either of the three play-makers addressed by Greene, it does not matter which, for an apology to Shakspere, who was not the object of Greene’s satire or Chettle’s placation for were not Nash, Marlowe and Peele each “excellent in the quality he professes?” Had they not lived in an age of compliment they would have merited these complimental phrases of Henry Chettle? For their names were in the trump of fame.